


Small Steps

by Tasceri



Series: Extended Universe [8]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 13:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11967915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tasceri/pseuds/Tasceri
Summary: I want to be close to him, so close his skin melts into mine and I forget who I am. I want to consume every part of him, inch by beautiful inch until there's nothing left but the taste of him in my mouth. (Compliant with Nebulabetta's and my shared extended universe)





	Small Steps

I wake up after dusk, feeling restless. I untangle my legs from the blankets and set my feet on the grass just beyond the shelter. It's the kind of cool that could be dampness, but it's hard to tell. I wriggle my toes, feeling the blades of grass tickle my skin, the hard earth underneath. I reach for a water bottle, unscrew the lid, and pour cold water into my mouth until it doesn't feel dry any more. The water tastes crisp like an open night sky when you can see all the stars. I crush the bottle in my hands; the plastic crinkles and crunches, but doesn't break. If I could will it I would bring all that water up out of my throat and back into the bottle. I screw the lid back on and throw the bottle across the lawn. I scratch my belly where the biggest gouge hasn't completely healed over yet, even though the Doctor took the stitches out last week. He sewed so much of me back up, or maybe it was one of his assistants. They're all the Doctor to me. There are a lot of people in the castle, more in the town. Too many people. I can hardly keep a grip on who I am, let alone everyone else.

I pick a tree and piss on its exposed roots. The bark is gnarled and crazed like days without water. I can almost feel the water inside me sloshing around in my stomach. Riku says I should drink whenever my mouth feels dry. So I piss a lot more too, light coloured piss without much of a smell. Riku calls it _going to the toilet_ , even though mostly I don't go inside unless I have to. To me, this whole world is a toilet.

I go back to the shelter and pull on one of Sora's old sweaters. All the clothes I wear are Sora's, after they took away my suit. I fucking hated that thing, but it was mine and they took it. I lived my whole life in that rubbery leathery prison that dug into me at the seams and always smelled like congealed blood, even when I washed it under the faucet outside Master Xehanort's house and lay it out on the stone paving to dry. I used to guard it from a distance, keeping my skin safe from the sunshine, my Keyblade already in my hand in case someone would arrive in that empty cemetary of a world for the first time and get it in their head to steal my clothes. Five pieces. Suit, belt, left boot, right boot, helmet.

I think maybe I had underpants once, too. Riku makes me wear new underpants every day. After seven days the clothes all go in a machine and come out hot and smelling like soap. Riku hangs them up on a line and sometimes I pull them down again, which makes him scowl and me laugh.

Riku says the clothes are mine, but they're Sora's. I won't let him buy me new clothes either. If something belongs to me, then it can be taken away from me. Even though Riku says he won't I know he could if he wanted. Nobody here would listen to me over Riku. Nobody would listen to me over anyone.

I go back to the trees and, after glancing back at the castle to make sure nobody is nearby, shimmy up one of the trunks to get to my stash. I balance carefully in the branches, concealed by leaves, and rummage in the crate until I find half a block of cheese wrapped in a paper towel. Although it's cool now, the day's heat has made it rich and sweaty. I chew on it thoughtfully. I already ate with Riku earlier, so I'm not particularly hungry.

Riku says I should eat whenever I feel hungry, but not so much that I make myself sick. He says there'll be food for me whenever I want, but he could change his mind, and I don't ever want to feel the gnawing empty hunger of starvation again. Like there's nothing inside of me and the nothing is eating my body right down to the bones.

The taste of cheese coats the inside of my mouth. I smack my lips together. I eat a bread roll and two of the little pancakes Kairi sometimes makes for breakfast. I squash a trail of ants leading to the crate and leave their corpses as a warning to any more that might try to take my food. Then I climb out of the tree.

I have to be careful about stealing food. Riku doesn't like me doing it. He found my first stash, in the room they kept me in before he built me the shelter, and then another one after that. So I always make sure I have a couple in well hidden places. I take things out of their packets and say that I ate them if he notices. I don't take too much at a time, even though I want to. I pick fruit and vegetables straight out of the fields, because nobody's counting the carrots in the dirt or the peaches in the trees, but I have to leave the animals alone. I took a chicken once and they noticed it was missing, and that's how Riku found my last stash.

I wander down to the fountain court and stand in the splash pool. Tiny fish, too small for me to grab, flicker around my feet. Big feet, like Sora's feet, my toes still curled inwards from wearing those boots for so long. I kick the water around, making the tiny fish scatter instantly. I summon my Keyblade and strike an invisible enemy. The movement comes so naturally it's like breathing.

Master Xehanort said a half-being like me wasn't fit to wield such a powerful weapon. But that didn't stop him watching me train under that unforgiving ochre sky until the pain was cutting me so deep I couldn't push it into physical form fast enough to stay standing. It didn't stop Void Gear feeling like an extension of myself, so close to existence that my fingertips always feel like they're touching the cool metal grip.

I leave the fountains behind and walk into town, where the houses cluster together as if to protect themselves from the cold. Only a couple of the streetlamps are lit, so I easily stick to the shadows, almost silent, almost invisible. In the dark people don't see me, like I've melted from greys into a featureless black. Someone is playing music in the marketplace. I smell cooked food, but the sound of voices keeps me away.

The people of Radiant Garden form a tight knit community. I guess losing your home does that to people, not that I'd know. Apart from occasional odd jobs for the Keyblade Wielders they mostly occupy themselves with rebuilding the town. Clearing out Darkness-ravaged properties one by one, growing things to eat in the old flowerbeds, fixing the electricity lines and the water pipes and the sewers. I know this because Riku helps them sometimes. He helps them because he has hands like magic that turn broken old junk into things that are new and better than before. I get bored watching him train with the others, but on days he helps the Restoration Committee I might even come out of the shade for a few minutes to watch his arms strain under the weight of a heavy load. Usually he mends things, spending an afternoon bricking up a flowerbed wall or putting a new awning over a shop front or turning two broken tables into one new one. While he's working he does this thing where he sweeps his damp hair up out of his face with his hand, and straight away flicks his head from side to side to shake his fringe back across his eyes. When he takes breaks he comes to sit next to me, downing half a bottle of water and passing the rest to me. I always chew on the lip of the bottle, the lip which has touched his lips, wondering what his mouth tastes like. His skin glistens with sweat and I want to peel it off him and wrap myself in it. As a protection, or maybe a disguise, or maybe just to feel like I'm part of him. Then he goes back to work and I watch him painstakingly creating something it would take me less than thirty seconds to destroy.

Apart from the shelter, I don't go near the things Riku builds. I say I don't want to break them, but I might be lying. I obliterated the shelter on the first night. It wasn't my fault. The fear was pouring off of me in waves and he had me trapped in that tiny space and he was going to make me so broken I'd never be strong enough to die. Anyway, by the time Master Xehanort was gone so was the shelter. Riku built it up again in the morning, because Riku is an idiot.

The current shelter has been up for two weeks. I know this because Riku ran a line of rope from one corner to the nearest tree and we've used it twice to hang up Sora's old clothes. On the other days, unless it's raining, he airs the blankets and pillows, at least the pillows I haven't pulled apart in the night. I get used to the routine. Not even just in my head; my stomach has started growling just before Riku fetches me for meals, and most days my body wakes up in time for Riku to come pick me up on his morning run.

I didn't have a routine with Master Xehanort. He even didn't care if I wandered for days, because he knew I'd come back. He knew that even if I left I'd be hurting, trying to hold in all of those feelings like being strangled all over, my whole body choking, pressure from the inside and pressure from the outside and looking into worlds an abomination like me could never be part of making it even worse.

I creep towards the market square, fascinated and repulsed by the alien tableau laid out ahead of me. The old man who smokes has a barbecue going. He hands out burgers in buns to the others. Someone says something and everybody laughs. I breathe in the smell of hot fat and char, but I don't move. They know what I am. Some of the older ones remember the Unversed. One of the younger ones glances in my direction and I shrink back. I don't know if she sees me but I slink away from the square just in case, needing to escape. The anxiety crawls up in my throat and I cough it out into a malevolent shifting creature, its eyes twisted in fear and its mouth gaping open, betraying me.

Riku says it's better to let the Unversed form than try to keep my feelings bottled up, but I stamp the ugly thing into a black smear on the paving stones. I hate the Unversed. I hate everything about them, but the thing I hate the most is that they're part of me. I don't want to be reminded that I'm more Unversed than Boy, with my stolen heart and stolen face and stolen Keyblade.

I run out to the perimeter of the town, my feet slapping against the ground. Out here there are no people, no streetlights, no occupied homes. Big chunks of streets and fields missing, chewed up by the Darkness. The horizon is a black streak pushing against this tiny, insignificant world. I kick a stray roof tile, sending a shoot of pain through my foot. I crack it with my heel over and over and over until I smell the familiar tang of blood. I keep walking, further and further, until the ground gives way to the sensationless Darkness, yellow eyes surfacing and sinking like an ocean half alive. I could keep going forever, just walking in the void between worlds, but instead I stare down at my feet, so pale they're almost glowing in the blackness.

All this Darkness, Darkness like me, and I'm still so fucking alone.

Once Riku found me out here, on the threshold between Radiant Garden and the space Inbetween, and he sat next to me in the wallowing Darkness without saying anything. And then when we were walking back to the Castle he said, "It's nice having someone who understands me like this."

This is dumb, because I don't understand Riku at all. If anything I understand him even less than anyone else. I didn't say that though. I didn't say anything. I walked in step with him, my bare feet and his flip flops, until we got to my shelter. I didn't feel like going inside so he brought out bowls of fried rice (no shrimp) and ate with me on the overhang of the shelter floor.

There have been a lot of days like that. Riku sitting next to me like he wants to say something but isn't sure what. Me sitting next to him wanting to wrap my hands around his neck, just to find out what it would take to kill him, wanting to bite into the flesh softening his cheekbones and slit open his belly to see what he's like on the inside. Wanting to touch every part of his body and somehow not destroy it so I could do it all over again.

Back in town the sky is grey with clouds, like someone took the bright pinpick stars and smeared them out across the night sky. It doesn't feel like it's going to rain though. Maybe later. I follow a different route, skirting the reclaimed farmland. Past one of the chicken coops, giving it a wide berth, just in case. I don't want to kill another chicken. I'm not hungry enough to eat it all before they catch me.

Riku says I shouldn't eat raw meat. He says I shouldn't eat anything that's rotting. He says I shouldn't eat fruit skins, but only certain fruit skins. He says I shouldn't eat food that's been on the ground, even though half the things he feeds me literally grow out of it. I don't know where rice comes from, but probably the ground too. He has a lot of rules about food and it frustrates him when I don't follow them. He has a lot of rules about everything.

Master Xehanort didn't really have rules. There were things I knew I'd get punished for doing, like going inside his house or defying his orders, but he punished me anyway so the punishments didn't stop me. Once when he was visiting the others, the ones who were loved, I broke in and destroyed everything I could get my hands on. I smashed up the furniture and tore apart his books and ripped the doors off their hinges and smeared shit on the walls and threw all his plates and bowls through the windows, revelling in the sound of shattering glass and shattering clay. I broke up that house like I wished I could break up my Master's body, and even that small act of revenge was worth the punishment I endured for it.

Riku doesn't punish me for anything. He apologises for losing his temper when all he does when he's angry is yell. I remind him that when I lose my temper I create rampaging monsters which destroy everything they touch.

Riku says he knows I'm trying. Darkness, I'm doing my fucking best.

I get back to the shelter just in time to see Riku coming down from the Castle. He jogs up to me and says, "Why aren't you wearing pants?"

I shrug. Riku grabs a pair of Sora's shorts from the chest in the back of the shelter. He helps me into a pair of shoes and I resist the urge to kick his perfect face. He notices my foot is bleeding and fusses with wipes and sticking plasters until he considers my wound sufficiently hidden. Then he asks if I'm hungry or thirsty and I shake my head no, not telling him about the cheese or the bread or the pancakes.

"You want a hot chocolate?"

I am a night creature, amusing myself in the big open while everyone sleeps away the darkness tucked inside. Even Riku goes to bed in the evening and doesn't wake until dawn. I know this because I watch him, wanting to touch his smooth sun darkened skin, but not trusting myself to even graze my fingertips across his tan lines for fear of the impulses to tear him apart. Sometimes he sleeps quietly, his chest hardly moving as he breathes. Sometimes he snores, the sound rattling around in his throat; sometimes his face screws up tight and his breath comes out in quick short pants, his body restless, caught in a bad dream. His twitching limbs fascinate me, his body moving to fragments of command from another world. Sometimes he wakes himself, sometimes shouting, sometimes gasping for breath as sweat and tears roll down his face. If he sees me, my yellow eyes startle him, too much like the monsters he fears. But when he realises it's only me, a benign monster at least for now, he laughs a short awkward laugh, gulping down his shuddering breaths, and invites me with him down to the kitchen for a drink.

I like sharing drinks with Riku. He heats up a pan of almond milk while I watch from the table, sometimes at the lazy curl of steam coming up from the pan but mostly at the curve of his spine where his back meets his ass. While he waits for the milk to heat up he shifts his weight from one foot to the other and I watch his ass cheeks move under his pyjama pants and imagine what it would be like to sink my teeth into them. Riku can't drink too much cow's milk, so when he makes hot chocolate for us he uses almond milk, which makes no sense, because I watch them milking the cows in the morning and almonds are just nuts.

The cows hate me, but they're not scared of me like other animals are because they look at my scrawny body and know they could crush it in five seconds flat. They watch me sternly if I'm nearby, daring me to test them. They don't know that I could slaughter the entire herd but I'm not going to get close enough to risk it. Anyway, I drink their milk in the morning and sometimes at night and dead cows probably don't make milk. Or maybe they do, if almonds can.

The world doesn't make any fucking sense.

As Riku breaks a couple of blocks of chocolate into the milk I ask, "Are almonds dead?"

Riku looks at me, opening his mouth to speak, but then he changes his mind. He looks at the milk carton still out on the counter. He frowns, crinkles forming between his long thin eyebrows.

"No," he says finally, not sounding sure, "But that doesn't mean they're alive either."

I think, maybe I'm almonds.

He takes the pan off the cooker, stirs in some syrup, and pours the hot chocolate into cups. He adds a splash of extra milk to mine and tests the temperature before giving it to me because he cares whether I burn my mouth even though I don't. I hold the plastic cup tightly in both hands so I don't throw it across the room.

"Cookie?" Riku pulls a cookie out of the jar for me and I grab it off him and stuff it into my mouth. I gulp down the hot chocolate. Riku wipes my face with a paper towel. I rest my chin on my arms and watch him dip his cookie into his chocolate, eating it in leisurely bites. Every few moments he glances at me with those blue-green-ocean eyes. I want them so desperately I would scoop my own eyes out with my fingers to make space for his eyes inside of me.

He says, "Did you have a good nap after dinner?"

I lift up my empty cup and smack it onto the table.

"Yeah. Then I went down into town."

"Did you see anyone?" he asks. I smack the cup on the table again.

"They're having a barbecue."

"Did you join them?"

"Nah." I act casual, like I wasn't afraid of all those people and the noise and comfortable aura surrounding them. Scared of ruining their evening, scared of ruining their fragile bodies, scared of ruining the delicate peace inside of me. "There were too many of them."

"That's understandable," Riku says. He's not much of a people person, although I figure for different reasons. I don't think he's afraid of instinctively killing anybody. But he avoided people for a long time, even - especially - people who loved him. I remember fragments of his life, experienced in reflection during my sleeping years inside of Sora's heart, or maybe I just remember Riku telling me his deep secrets from the years between, accompanied with a vague sense of familiarity as if part of me had watched those events fold out in another world. I don't remember much from my sleeping years. Memories of dreams melt like snow, even more than memories of waking. I still don't always know the difference, but it's getting easier now that the waking world follows a routine. If I remember eating breakfast in the morning with Riku, it's more likely to be a memory of waking than if I remember running after Riku in the space between worlds.

He finishes his hot chocolate and rinses out our cups. I want another cookie. He obliges. We sit in a peaceful quiet for a few minutes, Riku propping his chin up on the palm of his hand. I wonder if I could push my fingers into his wrist like melting into the shadows, like stepping into mud and letting the suction drag me down. I wonder if I could memorise the texture of his skin like I've memorised the texture of my Keyblade, of my deceased suit, of the sores that lay along my joints or the scars of chronic blisters on my hands and feet. I reach out, tentative, touching his arm with my fingertips. The skin warm and living.

Don't grab, don't grab, don't pull, don't tear, don't grab, don't break, don't grab, don't do it don't do it. Riku is still, watching me. I press down with the pads of my fingers, testing the give in his flesh. He's not like me, wire and bone no matter now much I eat. His skeleton carries pounds and pounds of muscle, meat enough to feed me for days, shaping his body into something strong and beautiful and magnetic. The skin on the inside of his elbow is softer. I resist the urge to scrape. Resistance, resistance. Testing mine, testing his. He moves his arm slightly and I feel the muscles flex and contort under his skin. My palm now flat against his upper arm, fingers splayed stiffly with the effort not to grasp hard enough to draw out blood. I am drawn towards him. My breath is rapid, my heartbeat firing into my ears. I stare at his eyes, the long dark lashes framing them, the upward tick of his eyelids creating a resting expression that's a little smug, a little curious, a little affectionate. Even though I just drank, my mouth feels dry. I could gulp down Riku's blood, hot sticky metallic mouthfuls of it. I push my other hand against his chest. His heart is drumming hard.

He murmurs, "Hey there," and I feel his breath on my face. I am pulled closer closer, now stretched across the table, my feet lifted well off the floor. My vision blurs and I squeeze my eyes tight shut, drinking in the sensation of his living beating body against my hands. I want ten hands, twenty, fifty hands to hold him and spread him out and carve him up and each grasp a piece of him tight tight tight.

I jump as his forehead touches mine. The contact dislodges a sound that was spring trapped in my belly and it slips out of my mouth, half a sigh, half a groan, all of it a release that shivers through my body brand new and intoxicating. I push, push, wanting to be closer, wanting to melt into Riku, wanting to dislodge his skin and become a parasite curled up comfortable and safe inside his skeleton. He smells like shampoo and chocolate and sweat and I _want_ it.

"Woah, hey," he says. His hands are on my arms and I would rip apart Sora's old sweater to have his skin touching my skin. "You keep pushing like that and we'll both end up on the floor." I fail to understand how this would be a problem. He shifts his weight and I am gripping him instinctively, white-knuckled, more afraid that he will move away from me than I am of killing him. Then he moves his head back and I scream before I realise the sound is escaping me but then his hand is on the back of my head guiding it towards his chest and my cheek is right over his heartbeat, his fingers touching my skull in gentle circular motions and his other hand on my shoulder doing the same thing, the lightest of touches as if I am so fragile any more would destroy me. Why won't he _really_ touch me, why won't he dig into my skin, why won't he tear me apart and hurt me and really make me _feel_?

Time is suspended, as if I am in a dream. The emotions inside me are pouring out but I'm not in pain, not any more than the constant background hum from my ravaged body. I don't understand. I don't understand. Riku presses his face, gently gently, into my hair where there's a centipede scar from the last thing Master Xehanort ever took from me, a punishment that turned my head into a cage of pain for so long that I still won't dare call anything _mine_.

I don't want to open my eyes. I don't want to see the swarms of Unversed filling the kitchen, Unversed I can feel like shadows of myself, shadows which will do anything I say except disappear. I count the pulses of Riku's heart, starting again each time my memory of numbers gets fuzzy.

Ventus knew all the numbers, and in the beginning I remembered, but over time anguish and anger stained my mind like blotches of scum in a stagnant pond, and now my memories are dim and unrealiable, even new ones, which warp and reshuffle themselves at will as if my mind has given up any hope of imposing order onto my life. The Doctor called it something medical, pointing to the scar on my head, but the answer is much simpler: what use does a monster have for a catalogue of knowledge and experiences?

Instead I rely on Riku, whose head remembers what day it is and when I last ate and counts out the pills the Doctor gives me to swallow. I rely on Riku too much. But if I lose him I will walk into the space between worlds and lie down and allow the Darkness to wash over me until this body becomes dust and all that's left of me is Unversed. It might take a while but I have all the time in the world. Time doesn't mean anything to a monster.

Riku's breaths are warm against my skin. He shushes me in gentle whispers, although I'm not screaming any more. Finally he eases me off the table and carries me in his strong arms out of the kitchen. I crack an eye open and force myself to watch the Unversed following us, bouncing off the corridor walls, unaccustomed as I am to confinement, pooling into the shadows and ripping fresh out of it, jumbles of half-familiar shapes with jagged claws and dark shiny unnatural skin, but the thing that makes me start is that their eyes aren't just red, they're orange embers and licks of sunset and bright gold like mine. I must have jolted in surprise because Riku stumbles, nearly losing his balance and dropping me but his arms hold tight and my claws are vices on his back. He murmurs an apology. My mouth is very close to his neck and I could just tear at the sinew and veins but I clamp my jaws so fast my teeth burn. His soft white hair licks my face as he carries me out into the windy night air, the Unversed spilling like gushing blood from a fresh wound behind us.

He lays me down on the mattress in the shelter. It takes him a few minutes to peel my limbs off him, although this time I don't scream. I have left welts in Riku's arms, although with my nails clipped carefully each day only a couple have drawn blood. I touch the shiny beads in the dim light, mesmerised.

"You've got quite a grip," Riku admits. I laugh at him. My laugh is nasty and jagged but it's the only one I've got.

"You should be grateful I didn't use my teeth." I feel a little calmer, and there are fewer Unversed now. They are creeping towards Riku and I swat them away irritably.

"It's okay," says Riku, "They're not causing any trouble." He picks one of the smaller ones up and I almost feel his hands around my waist lifting me. The phantom sensation makes me shiver. He says, "I don't remember seeing Unversed with yellow eyes before."

I bap the ugly thing out of his hands but before I can force myself into his lap to replace it I am swallowed by fear, so I sulk instead. Riku looks at me until the Unversed are all gone. I wrap myself in a blanket, staring back.

Eventually he says, "So what feelings were they?"

I lay down. My head is less than a foot away from Riku's thigh. His jeans wrap around his leg like a second skin, stretched taut and pulled into crinkles around his hip. I wonder what it would be like to dip my fingers between his legs, if his skin is softer and paler there. I haven't seen Riku naked, which isn't fair, because he sees me stripped down to nothing every time he makes me take a bath.

But then, Riku doesn't look like a carcass that didn't get the memo it was supposed to be dead.

I say, "I don't know." I think about touching Riku but so that he's still beautiful when I'm done. He's got scars, but not like I have, not streaks of flesh warped and twisted and discoloured. That's what happens when there's a doctor to sew the skin up and inject glowing green liquid into your flesh so it knits together quick and doesn't keep crying and crying.

I don't remember very much from the first few days of my new life here, but I do remember when they took away my suit and the Doctor said that by all accounts I shouldn't have been alive with my body in such a state. I remember because I laughed, I laughed until my ribs ached, and said _tell me something I don't know, asshole_.

Keeping my hands wrapped up inside the blanket, I worm closer to Riku. In the dim light his eyes are a cool stormy grey I could sink into. "I'm going to kill you," I say matter-of-factly. "I'm going to tear off your skin and eat it."

At first saying things like this made Riku frown with concern, but now he just chuckles.

"I'm pretty sure fried rice would taste better."

"Maybe," I concede. Riku gazes out at the horizon, one arm resting on his knee, the other holding his weight. I wonder how fast he'd react if I smacked that arm away from him, whether he'd fall on his back and I could pin him down and pull clumps of his lovely fluffy hair from his head. But although I used to have the power to devastate worlds the Doctor's treatment and Riku's steady diet of hot food and trust have dulled my ability to create Unversed, so Riku is more powerful than me now. I don't know if I'm like almonds, not alive enough to die, but Riku could snap me in half if he wanted.

And maybe I'd let him.

I am almost touching Riku's leg. I can smell him, a smell that isn't exactly good but that makes me want to gulp big airfuls of it so I could breathe it out and smell it again even when Riku isn't close.

Riku starts to play with his hair. I watch him jealously, wishing I could tangle my fists into his hair without pulling hard. He notices me staring at him and his hand stills. Then he reaches down to my head and I nearly flinch but he is gentle, so _gentle_ , stroking my hair in long slow delicate motions.

Hair wasn't something I ever really thought about before Riku. We didn't pay any attention to what our hair did when we were Ventus, besides sitting down somewhere to get it cut whenever it got long enough to hang in our eyes. Then in the beginning I didn't have any hair, just my helmet, and when the Doctor was done with his scissors and razor I didn't have much hair left afterwards either. It's growing back, but nothing like Riku's - coarse and dark and patchy and starting to stick out in weird directions. I remember a fragment of a dream where I held Riku's soft soft hair in my hands, but then I smashed his head into the glass and he was gone from my lonely sleeping world as suddenly as he'd come. That particular dream was summarised in Riku's journal as follows: _Spent a long time talking to Vanitas. Lay down side by side for a while. Vanitas touched my hair. Woke up with a bruise on forehead._

I close my eyes and let the sensation of Riku stroking my hair wash over me. I dare myself to rest my head on his thigh. He's sturdy but there's give in the muscle, and he's so warm, warmer than he has any right to be. It's so hard to be still but at the same time I'm paralysed. My breath slows to the rhythmn of his palm. After a while he murmurs, "You asleep?"

I could be dreaming, like when I would wake with the phantom affection from the other half of my heart crawling over my skin, but I pinch myself and I am alive and I grumble something like "No" at Riku. Riku doesn't say anything else, he just keeps stroking my hair, lulling me into calmness. Feeling as though all the joints in my body are too loose to do any harm I extract a hand from the blanket and lay it palm up against Riku's leg. There are more Unversed lurking in the shadows.

I say, falteringly, "It feels like when you have a full belly and you're in bed and it's warm and it's so much you can't sleep." I cautiously twist my hand round, pressing my fingers into the crook of Riku's knee. "Like that, but more." I curl myself up tighter, as if I will die if any part of me is more than a couple of feet from Riku. "It feels..." I'm afraid to say _good_. Compared to the agony of my last life the screwed up tight feeling inside of my chest is incredible, but positive emotions don't turn into monsters. Nothing good could flood out of me into ugly demonic shapes made of Darkness. "It's so much but it isn't enough either." And then I admit in a whisper: "I don't have a fucking clue. I've never felt like this before."

"Happiness?" Riku ventures, hand still in my hair. I laugh, first a snicker then big shivering peals of laughter that convulse through me. At first because the concept of happiness is so alien to me, because I never even dared to dream of _happiness_ , only for the end of pain, but soon I am laughing because I can't believe that an abomination like me is really wrapped up in a blanket having his hair stroked by the world's most beautiful fuck up, and then I am laughing because I don't care if this isn't happiness, I don't care at all.

I sit up, swallow down a few deep breaths, and bravely lean my whole body against Riku. He leans back and loops his arm around me and I feel... safe.


End file.
